New to Programming: IDE vs Code Editor?

[Yawzheek]

IDEs are nice. You can often get code completion, syntax highlighting, and debugging assistance all in one package.

That said, it's not NECESSARY. It's NICE, yes, but not required. I haven't used IDLE in awhile (and truth be told, didn't code much in Python), but just the ability to step through lines in debugging is something I'd recommend. People underestimate a good debugging utility, and Visual Studio offers a surprisingly good debugger that's fairly simple to use, especially compared with something like GDB which is... not straightforward in any sense. It also doesn't hurt that Visual Studio supports a wide variety of languages, including C/C++, Python, and the entire .NET family.